The weblog of Norman Geras

September 13, 2012

Figures from a dark time IV

Since there are people who believe that too much attention has been given to the Holocaust, a need obviously exists to further publicize what happened to the victims.

9. Lea Judith de la Penha was one of them. Evidence that she was among those murdered at Sobibor has been uncovered by archaeologist Yoram Haimi, who has applied his professional skills to researching the site of that camp. His work is described here:

After learning that two of his uncles were murdered in the infamous Sobibor death camp, he embarked on a landmark excavation project that is shining new light on the workings of one of the most notorious Nazi killing machines, including pinpointing the location of the gas chambers where hundreds of thousands were killed.

Sobibor, in eastern Poland, marks perhaps the most vivid example of the "Final Solution," the Nazi plot to wipe out European Jewry. Unlike other camps that had at least a facade of being prison or labor camps, Sobibor and the neighbouring camps Belzec and Treblinka were designed specifically for exterminating Jews. Victims were transported there in cattle cars and gassed to death almost immediately.
.....
The most touching find thus far, he said, has been an engraved metal identification tag bearing the name of Lea Judith de la Penha, a 6-year-old Jewish girl from Holland who Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial confirmed was murdered at the camp.

Haimi calls her the "symbol of Sobibor."

"The Germans didn't discriminate. They killed little girls too," he said. "This thing (the tag) has been waiting for 70 years for someone to find it."